


Hero In The Family

by Churbooseanon



Category: Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Family Protectiveness, Frank Shepherd PoV, Gen, Implied/Reference Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Threats of Violence, Yes that pov is accurate and heaven help us all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 08:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30120126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: It takes Frank Shepherd a while to put together the pieces of what happened to the son he'd raised, until he didn't of course. And what he figures out doesn't make him happy.Good thing there are people out there who actually have the young man's back. Well, not good news for Frank probably.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Hero In The Family

**Author's Note:**

> In my story _The Space Between Today and Tomorrow_ I had this half throwaway line to in passing show how serious Tommy's family was about him. 
> 
> "Frankly, David was certain that if Erik or Pietro ever learned the full truth of Tommy’s upbringing, Frank Shepherd would be lucky to even be able to eat through a straw."
> 
> Well, some anon pointed out they would REALLY like to see what might actually come of Pietro and Erik finding it out. This sort of spiraled out from there and the characters went places I never would have foreseen. Set during/post Empyre run, but absolutely ignoring the Maximoff origins retcon that we all agree is total BS. 
> 
> I will also say that Frank Shepherd is a horrid person, thinks horrid things, and I do not share his opinions, biases, or disgusting personality. I just have had the misfortune of knowing people like him which has lent itself well to writing such a horrid person. Thank you.

Six years, seven months, two weeks, and one day.

That was how long it took one Frank Shepherd to realize that his son was a superhero.

Six years, seven months, two weeks, and one day where he had gone from trying not to think of his mutant freak of a son to barely ever thinking of him to the next best thing to forgetting the kid had even existed. In that time some level of peace had come into his life, or as much peace as someone could get when they worked a dead end job stocking shelves and dealing with customers at a home improvement store. His mornings were wrought with the pulsing sharpness of a hangover, his afternoons the tired exertions of moving things from point a to point b and the particular headache that customers brought to him, his evenings with cans of beer and whatever sporting event was on television. The improvements had come, of course, in the form of not fighting with Mary every night, in not having to watch out for anyone but himself, in not having to put money out of his own pocket taking care of something he’d never wanted in the first place.

The pieces hadn’t fit together until one strange summer when a giant, plant-like being had stormed into the hardware store and cried out in a fit of rage at the lumber yard section. None of it had made sense at the time. Why was there a tree walking and talking and flailing about in the store? Had to be some super hero shit, right? The thing had been on a rampage, fists that clearly packed a lot of punch slamming into checkouts and kicks upending whole counters. People had been trying their hardest to flee, just like Frank had. It had been his lunch break, and he’d been on his way to the front of the store where this one little Mexican man sold hotdogs from a cart, and instead, well, this.

The hulking plant had moved toward where Frank had been cowering behind a display of drills and cordless saws, bellowing in fury. And then, just like that, Frank wasn’t in the store at all. Instead he’d been outside, on the far side of the parking lot with a mass of equally confused people, a wake of wind and afterimage of green in his eyes. While he tried to get his bearings it finally hit him.

Six years, seven months, two weeks, and one day from the moment when he’d been told that Thomas wasn’t going to be coming out of juvie any time soon it all came together in his head. Fragments of news stories involving some group called the Young Avengers some time back, with a blur of green costume and white hair, suddenly popped up in his mind. Memories of younger employees at work joking around that if they really had to have a super power but not get out of work, they’d want something like what Quicksilver or Speed had, to at least make the work go faster so they could chill out most of the time. Flickers of motion at the corner of his eyes, but never any person there when he went to look, only a gust of wind...

Thomas Shepherd was a superhero, and there was nothing Frank could do about it but gawk as coworkers, customers, and even pets were all ferried from the store at an impossible speed, leaving a milling crowd. There were still roars of rage and frustration from the direction of the building, but no one seemed eager to leave. Instead there were cellphones out, taking video of what was happening, even as a small explosion echoed from the doors of the store.

Thomas. Six years, seven months, two weeks, and one day.

Just as suddenly as Frank had been moved, there he was, a man grown in skin tight green and silvery-white, his hair a mess, his eyes behind a silly looking pair of goggles with orange lenses. He was taller now, more confident looking, and definitely more built than he remembered. All the attitude was there, though, his eyes rolling as he looked at the mass of people just standing there, cameras all on him.

“Hey, how about you all wise up and get running? The Cotati aren’t exactly all kindness and hugs here. Go home, lock your doors, stay out of the way. The Avengers will have this under control in no time.”

Someone started to say something, but the man was gone. For he was a man, had all the confidence and power of one, even if his powers were also a bit... something else.

_Did he even know I was here?_ Frank wondered, but only for the briefest moment. It didn’t really matter, now did it? Hell, it was probably better that he hadn’t.

“Hey Rupe,” Frank called to the manager that was nearby in the still milling crowd. “You heard the costumed freak. Day off?”

Rupert just nodded. What else were they supposed to do?

* * * * * *

Six years, seven months, three weeks, three days. That was how long it had been since Frank Shepherd had shrugged when his son hadn’t even bothered to look at him after the sentencing. He hadn’t been at the trial because he wanted to. No, he’d been there as a witness for the prosecution. To tell them all the shit his son had gotten up to back in the day. To tell them just how bad Thomas was, and how frankly the system would be doing everyone a favor to lock the mutant freak up and lose the key.

They hadn’t lost the key apparently. Or maybe they just hadn’t been as good at holding the kid who had the power to make things and people explode as they might have been. Granted the break out had never been on the news, which was weird. Frank would have thought that would have come out. Some out of control mutant freak just getting out, who had killed before, that was a danger to society. But hey, sometimes you didn’t want people to panic he guessed. If he’d known, he might have worried. As it was, the kid had clearly been out for a while and never come after him, so it was fine. Clearly Thomas just knew that all he’d gotten was what had been coming to him. Thomas was pretty damn prone to doing things that earned some level of punishment from Frank’s experience. He’d been pretty good at dealing out that punishment too, when the kid warranted it. Which was always. Mary had left that to him, before the ungrateful bitch had gotten tired of the food he put on their table, and doing her part of keeping the house clean and meals cooked and all the shit a woman was supposed to do.

Part of him wondered if Mary knew that the fucking kid was up to superheroing. The rest of him, the better part of him, didn’t give a flying fuck. Let her be blindsided with it whenever it came up. Not like he had talked to her since that day in the court room, and even that had merely been an exchange of greetings.

Then again, maybe the bitch had already known. Just like her to keep that sort of shit from him, wasn’t it? Just like the damn world to keep him in the dark about stuff he had a right to know.

The very thought made him angry, but really, it didn’t take much to make Frank Shepherd angry, at all. So he had no problem with letting the feelings build up, letting the annoyance build until there was no good answer for it but drinking. And given the fact that drinking meant he needed beer and he’d already blown his way through every last can and bottle of beer and even the ends of the terrible vodka he didn’t remember getting, there weren’t a lot of options at his place. So Frank grabbed his keys and headed out for the bar.

He stayed there for a few hours, working his way through mug after bottle after can, not particular about what he was drinking provided he was drinking.

“She shoulda tol’ me,” he slurred at whoever would make the unfortunate mistake of sitting too close to him. “My boy too, see? Shoulda tol’ me he was like... like tha’.”

The words didn’t seem to want to catch quite right in his mouth. Even the one guy that had politely nodded along when Frank offered to buy him a beer seemed to get annoyed trying to follow what Frank was saying. And why should _he_ be the one who was annoyed? It wasn’t like that guy’s kid was the one who was a secret fucking superhero, which he didn’t deserve because the kid had killed people. Sure, Thomas had begged and pleaded when Frank had gone to see him that _one_ time after he was arrested before trying to wash his hands of it all. Even now, even with the sidewalk under him listing one way and then another, he remembered the way the kid had looked up at him. Thomas’s eyes had been too green and his hair suddenly white as snow. Trauma, the lawyer had called it. Or maybe his powers. But Thomas had looked up at him, for just a moment, when he’d walked in. There had been a desperation in the kid’s eyes, a need that Frank hadn’t liked to see.

He’d walked right back out.

“Woah there,” someone said, their voice curling in some foreign accent as a hand caught Frank’s shoulder just before he fell to the ground. “Seems like you’ve had a bit tonight.”

“Ain’t ‘nuff,” Frank counted, but he nodded along, seemed to make sense. He had been trying to get like this.

When he looked up at the man who helped him, it was like deja vu. Snow white hair, soft blue eyes, broad shoulders, the angle of his jaw.

“Ger’way from me,” he hissed, shoving at the stranger, except his hand never made contact. His balance was thrown, to have the support suddenly not there, suddenly standing a few inches back like he’d never been there at all, and because he’d been trying to shove, Frank fell forward, barely catching himself with his already outstretched hands. There was a flare of pain up his arm and that was sobering in its own way. Sobering enough that when he looked up at the stranger he saw the differences this time.

Blue eyes, not green. Hair that swept back from his head in two strange flares over the sides of his head. Height that the kid never had on him, probably because Mary’s family was full of short fucks. And, of course, age. The guy wasn’t as old as Frank, but he sure as hell wasn’t as young as Thomas would be. This, then, wasn’t his son. But damn, they really did look almost disturbingly alike.

How was it that the words went? Everyone’s got a double out there somewhere? This, he guessed, must be Thomas’s. Except the man looked perfectly respectable, had even been helpful, unlike that brat of a kid.

“Well, that was a doozy,” the stranger observed, the voice definitely accented. Something like he hadn’t heard before, though there was something nigglingly familiar about it. Maybe the guy was in TV or something. Looked like he could play some parts. “You going to be okay?”

Frank shrugged and pushed himself up to sitting.

“Gotta git home,” he mumbled, and then the man was there at his side before Frank could blink. Fuck, he must be seven sorts of messed up for his brain to black out long enough for that.

“Come on, let’s get you back into the bar. They’ll call a cab. No way you can drive like this.”

Frank didn’t protest the hand offered out to him, let it pull him up. The man was way stronger than he looked, hauling Frank up so quickly that he almost feel right back over. But they figured it out, and soon he was heading back to the bar door with the stranger walking beside him, a respectable distance away, but ready to step in as needed.

“Your name?” the white-haired man asked. “For them to put on your keys?”

“Frank,” he managed to get out after two tries. “Sorreh I tried ‘a push ya. Reminded me of summin’.”

“Must have been someone unpleasant for you to react like that.”

“Yeah. My fuckin’ ungrateful, useless, piece o’ shit son,” Frank rattled off, unable to keep the vitriol out of his voice. “Little sh-”

“It’s not my business,” the man cut in, his voice just a little harder, “but why would I remind you of your child?”

“Look like ‘im. A little. The, yanno,” Frank said, but when he couldn’t come up with the word, he gestured at his own head.

“My hair?”

“Yeah, that stuff,” he agreed. “Yer face too. A lil. Ya look more like ‘im than I do.”

That made Frank stop, just briefly. Could have been a stumble, but it felt like more. Was that what it had always been? That the little punk was never his? Had Mary been stepping out on him when they had been together? That bitch. He was going to get to the bottom of this, because here was the damn answer. The kid had never been his, and if he hadn’t, that bitch owed him some payment for all those child support checks from after they’d split.

“Damn bitch,” he hissed.

“There there, Mister Shepherd, you’ll feel better when you’re home in your own bed, sleeping this off.”

“Yeah,” Frank agreed.

He really wasn’t in a good way. He hadn’t even remembered giving the man his last name. Stupid almost blackout drunk.

By the time he woke up in the morning, he didn’t even remember how he had gotten home.

* * * * * *

Six years, eight months, one day.

The more he thought about it, the more Frank was certain he knew who to lay the blame of this all down on. Only way that any of this made sense was if it was all Mary’s fault. There was no way that a kid like Thomas could ever come from him. The other night he’d run into that guy, and the thought hadn’t left him since that there was no way he was that brat’s father. Someone else was responsible, and he had been cheated by Mary. All the cost that boy had leeched out of him when he was a kid, all the years of buying him clothes and food and doctor’s visits, that had come right out of his pocket when it shouldn’t have been his responsibility in the least. Way he figured it, she owed him money. A _lot_ of money.

He tried calling, of course. The last thing he wanted to do was be face to face with Mary. Last time that had happened, things had been broken. Where she’d had that baseball bat hidden that she’d taken to town on his truck he didn’t know, but damn, that had been a hefty bill for repairs that she had refused to pay a single cent for. But if he could get her to admit it, then fuck, why not hire a lawyer and sue her for every damn penny that he had put into a child that wasn’t his?

Problem was this. When Frank tried her at the number she’d always had when they’d been married, the number she had still used a few years back when he’d drunk-called her, he’d gotten through. This time he tried the number and was answered by a little old man who seemed very confused, and wanted to know who he was supposed to marry. Trust that bitch to ditch the number just as he was getting wise to her little game. The good news was that she hadn’t moved, Frank was pretty certain of that. So, after work, he loaded up in his truck and set down the back roads that would take him from Springfield to the town of Fair Haven where he knew she had moved.

The thing about the roads between the two towns were that there were more than a few little, semi-rural communities mostly only populated with people with too much money and thus too much land. There were not insubstantial periods of time where one could be on the road and no one would see them. Normally this was no problem.

Normally one wasn’t driving along only to find two men standing in the middle of the road. Normally one didn’t have to slam on their breaks to keep from killing some stupid fucking fools. And normally one didn’t find themselves suddenly out of their car and standing on the road while behind them there was the horrifying and terrible screeching sounds of a truck pulling itself apart.

“What the-” Frank started to say until he looked up and caught sight of the two men in the road a bit more clearly.

Two men with snow white hair and dressed not like normal people, but like super heroes, or some other shit. One in blue with a white lightning bolt across their chest, hair swept back smooth in the middle, but more like horns to the sides. He looked familiar, and Frank realized it was because that was the man he remembered, quite vaguely, as the one he’d seen outside of the bar that night he’d realized Thomas couldn’t be his. Quicksilver, Frank’s brain provided. He’d seen the guy on the television alright, but because this was a fucking _Avenger_. But that worried him less than the other figure, taller, more imposing, radiating pure malevolence. This one was older, clad in black and white with a slowing cape, an X on his belt, and a helmet that sold the identity better than anything else ever could. Well, except for, when Frank looked back over his shoulder, the way that his truck was pulling apart, the plastic bits falling to the ground and the magnetic metals just gathering into large balls that soon dropped with loud crashes to the ground. Magneto.

Fuck.

“Mister Shepherd,” Magneto said, his voice deep, rumbling, and so very, very cold. It was the sort of voice that might well make someone’s life flash before their eyes. “I believe it is well past time that the three of us had a little talk.”

Magneto, master of magnetism, a leader of that new freak nation that had manipulated the world into accepting them, former terrorist. Wanted to have a talk with _him?_ That couldn’t bode well. The only hope Frank had was that Quicksilver was there as well, because if he remembered stuff, it was that these two men didn’t see eye to eye. So he was probably, you know, maybe safe.

“I ain’t got any business with men like you,” Frank said.

“Men like us?” Quicksilver spoke, arms crossed over his chest. “Just what does that mean?”

Something told Frank that this was not the right audience for the first words that came to mind.

“This is not the time, Pietro,” Magneto dismissed, taking a few steps toward Frank, his cloak or cape or some shit flapping behind him despite the absolute lack of a breeze. “We have more in common than you might think, Mister Shepherd. Namely, a person in common.”

Thomas. Fuck, that little mutie freak must have recognized him at the hardware store after all.

There wasn’t even time to think before his feet weren’t touching the ground, a hand gripping his shirt as Quicksilver held him up off of the ground with one hand and apparently no strain. There was a dark look in his eyes, hatred and fury barely restrained, as he bared his teeth.

“Call him that again, and I’ll break your jaw into so many little pieces that no surgeon will ever be able to put it together,” Quicksilver snapped. Apparently Frank had said the inside words out loud and the guy didn't much like them. And he sure as hell looked he was not only capable, but willing to live up to his threat.

“Come now, we are not barbarians,” Magneto said, and with a flick of his fingers Frank was ripped from Quicksilver’s grip, hovering further over the ground with his wrist over his head. His watch, Frank realized, was metal. And his belt buckle. Fuck. “You know quite well that no level of punishment we could offer him would be nearly so creative, nor so lasting, as what Wiccan might visit upon him.”

Wiccan? What the fuck did that mean? The confusion must have been written on his face, because Quicksilver laughed, shaking his head.

“Man, you don’t even know what level of shit you’re in for, are you?” the man asked, still smirking. “You have no fucking clue at all.”

“It’s for the best,” Magneto said, before lowering his fingers, bringing Frank slowly down to his feet. “I believe we can all be civilized today, in order to prevent the more civilized members of the family into this discussion. We don’t want them having to live with the guilt. Now, Mister Shepherd, you will refrain from referring to Thomas as either a ‘mutie’ or a ‘freak’ before us. We take that particularly poorly, especially when such terms are turned upon our family.”

Family?

Now that they mentioned it, Frank could see the resemblance, impossibly written on their faces. Which he supposed only solidified his belief that Mary had been stepping out on him. So, one of these two men had been sleeping with Mary. Figured that she’d find it in herself to bed down with some mutant terrorist. Which only further proved that he was owed quite a lot, for raising their fucking kid.

“Which of you did it. Which of you was Mary banging?”

The two men shared a look of confusion, disgust, and finally for Quicksilver, renewed amusement.

“Wow did you read that wrong,” Quicksilver noted. “It’s way more complicated than that. But still not completely wrong. But that’s a story you don’t deserve. What you _do_ need to know is that we know all about you, Frank. About your role in Tommy’s life. About how he became a good man in spite of you and your wife.”

Good man? Now it was Frank’s turn to laugh.

“That kid killed people,” he corrected them, pointing his free hand at the supposed superhero. “Fucking blew up his school because he was bored. He should be behind bars, just like the both of you.”

Neither man reacted to that. But before Frank could say more, he was pinned against one of the metal balls that used to be his truck, metal deforming to clamp around his hands and restrain him even as Quicksilver held him still.

“Mutants whose powers are first manifesting rarely have proper control over them,” Magneto said as he approached, a bored look on his face like he was giving a rehearsed speech or some shit. Like he had some sort of right to tell Frank this shit. “Thomas’s powers are particularly volatile. From what we understand of the situation, it truly was not his intention, and he regrets it very much. And the accidents of his past do not erase the good he does as an Avenger.”

Avenger. Thomas was really an Avenger and not just claiming it out of nowhere the other day? That was hard to believe. How could a piece of shit kid like that claim a title putting him on par with the greats like Iron Man and Captain America and all those home-grown human heroes? No, mutie freaks didn’t belong among the Avengers. Especially not Thomas.

“You sure I can’t break his jaw?” Pietro said aloud, coming up to grip Frank’s chin in his fingers. “Looks fragile. No one has to know.”

“He might recover. He might talk,” Magneto warns. “Threats given with no lasting marks he can take to the media and be laughed out of the room, though I suppose a tabloid might listen. But hurt him, and it will be on the evening news. News that the Kree-Skrull Alliance monitors. News that Wanda watches.”

Kree-Skrull Alliance?

“Those alien assholes who invaded recently? Why should I care about them?” Frank snapped.

“You’re really fucking dense, even for some racist American hick, aren’t you?” Quicksilver asked, shaking his head. “Let’s start with small concepts. Your son is a superhero, fights to save people, despite scum like you teaching him that he’s worthless. Despite how you _hit_ him, and how you _starved_ him when his powers meant he needed more. You can’t even imagine how that feels, to not have enough to eat when your body runs so much faster, so much hotter than other people.”

“I only hit him when he needed punished!” Frank protested. “And Mary handled meals.”

“Oh, she’s an upcoming conversation, we assure you,” Magneto said, head tilted to the side. “However, we are very well aware of what the two of you did to my grandson. It was truly a pity that he came to be in your hands. But Pietro and I have agreed that it was beyond time to ensure that neither of you little people who could, uncharitably, have been called parents, ever bother Thomas in his life. That you’ll never reveal who he is, and that you’ll never bring your knowledge to his attention, or that of his brother or true-mother.”

True-mother? What the fuck? Frank didn’t understand at all what they were talking about. None of this made any sense.

“To put it simply,” Quicksilver, Pietro apparently, cut in, “you hurt the wrong person when he was a kid. Because his best friend is the emperor of the Alliance, his brother is the prince-consort and more than capable of destroying you with a word, and then there’s us.”

Magneto nodded. “There are few fronts upon which my son and I are united. Thomas’s health and safety is one of those areas.”

Still none of this made sense. One of the biggest names in villainy of all time, and a fucking Avenger, right here, threatening him. Over Thomas? That stupid piece of shit? How could they even begin to think that...

“Let him go.”

A third voice joined the conversation, a third man with white hair. This one a bit shorter than the other two, a bit leaner, and in a familiar green and silver outfit. Where he’d come from Frank didn’t know, but there he was, standing between Frank and his attackers. Saved, once again, by this piece of trash.

“Tommy,” Quicksilver said, his voice soft, hand reaching out. Thomas just knocked it aside and then pointed a finger at Magneto.

“I said let him go,” the young man snapped, and Frank felt the chunks of metal wrapped around his wrists loosening until they were gone entirely and he was dropped to the ground.

“We were just...”

“Don’t tell me what you were just doing. You’re both in so much trouble. David too,” the young hero snapped and then Frank was looking up at Thomas, who had turned around and lifted his goggles up.

Six years, eight months, one day since Frank Shepherd had last looked into his son’s eyes. It had come just as he had sat on the witness stand, looked Thomas dead in the eyes, and then told the court that his son was a hazard to society and they should throw him in a deep pit and never look back. In that moment Thomas had seemed so tired, so beaten down, so defeated.

What he found in those vibrant green eyes now was... pity and disgust.

“This man is nothing,” Thomas declared, his tone flat. “He’s nothing to me. I know who my family is, I know who loves me. And him? He’s just a piece of shit human who I had the misfortune of living with for a while. He isn’t worth dirtying anyone’s hands over.”

With that the boy turned his back on Frank, and started to walk away. Both of the other men looked toward Frank, like they wanted to say something, do something, but they just nodded. In a flash Quicksilver was gone, and Magneto took off into the air, rising into the sky with the chunks of Frank’s truck following him.

“Tommy, are you certain?” Magneto asked, and there was a gentleness in his voice that made Frank sick.

“Yeah,” Thomas insisted with a sigh. “I’ve got this. I promise.”

Magneto nodded and then flew away, disappearing into the sky. Frank was left behind in the road with the plastic and glass pieces of his truck, and Thomas, dressed up like a hero.

“Let’s make this simple,” Thomas said, turning back to look at Frank. Something about the look on his face made Frank look away, like he wasn’t worthy of looking at the kid he had raised. “You tell no one who I am. None of this happened. If I ever hear that my identity got out by some method other than me saying it myself, someone will find you. It might not be me, but it will be someone. Hope it’s Pietro, because he’ll only kick your ass. As for me? I could care less about your life, just like you didn’t care about mine. If you ever get in trouble again, don’t expect me to haul your sorry ass out of it.”

What sort of statement was that? Who the fuck was this kid to tell him that? Frank took a step forward, and before he could do more than that, a rock near his foot exploded. He jumped back, he hadn’t been prepared for that.

“I’ve got a lot more control these days. The place you helped send me to? They wanted a weapon, Frank. They wanted someone who could get in and out, and vibrate just a tiny bit of someone’s brain to make it explode. To kill without being detected. I can do it, I was _very_ good at what they wanted of me. I promised my team that I wouldn’t take lives, that I wouldn’t murder, except if I had no choice to do it to save this world. But for you? For you, Frank, I could make a fucking exception.”

And the he was alone.

Six years, eight months, one day since the last time Frank Shepherd had ever spoken to his son.

Time for a new count to start, and he found himself praying he never heard the name Thomas Shepherd or Speed again. If he did, well, who knew what might happen.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone thinks that Pietro and Erik are the ones to be afraid of if someone hurt Tommy, one should remember that the person would likely live. Hurt, yes. Maimed, probably. Regretting it for the rest of their lives, absolutely. But Wanda and Billy? They'd be the scary ones. And probably Luna too. Bet she'd carve out every emotion that wasn't sorrow and despair from the person's mind. Just syaing.


End file.
